Location, location, location

March 1st, 2010

Location, location, location.

I’ve not only been hearing this on my recent quest for a new home, but also on a regular basis as I attempt to keep pace with the advances in social media and mobile technology. I just signed into my Google Reader and four of the first articles that popped out to me were:

“Shout’em Adds Location To Its White Label Mobile SocNets”

“Location-based Virtual Goods Up Next From Little World Gifts”

“Google Challenges Bing’s Photosynth; Adds User Photos to Street View”

“POLL: What Location-Based Mobile Apps(s) Will You Use During SXSW?”

As a consumer, what does all this location hype do for you? To name a few, you can find friends nearby, find specials nearby and read reviews on a business before you go in. And as a business, incentivize your regular customers to add tips and reviews about your business to spread the word to their friends and followers. Or, reach new customers when they’re nearby through these services.

How have these apps and games worked or not worked for you? How are you using them as a consumer, marketer or business?

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Raleigh Media Leaders

January 28th, 2010

A big thank you to everyone who helped with, supported and attended the Raleigh Media Leaders networking event this week. I couldn’t have been more proud to be a part of the Raleigh community of media, advertising, PR and tech leaders. A special thank you to Phil Buckley who found the 6-city event and brought it to Raleigh for all of us to benefit from.

There are so many things I could say about how fantastic the event was, but I’ll leave you with just a few bullets about what the Raleigh Media Leaders event reinforced for me:

• Raleigh is brimming with smart, creative and engaged community members (not to mention cool and good looking!)
• Jobs are so much more than just jobs. It’s a great feeling to be working in a field that you love and believe in. Then, finding such a large and energetic group of people who share those feelings with you is just the cherry on top.
• As Cord said, nothing replaces meeting someone IRL.
• As Shane said, the minimal structure of the event allowed it to take its own shape and allowed all the creative thinkers there to enjoy one another’s company.
• Social media really supports building relationships – I ‘met’ so many people at the event who I’d already established a relationship with. It made it that much easier to dive right into real conversation and skip the small talk.

Thanks to everyone who attended. You made our job of organizing easy. I think any event planner’s nightmare is a lackluster event, so thanks for bringing the energy and enthusiasm. And again, thanks to Phil Buckley for inviting me to be a part of the planning committee. To those committee members, thanks for all the time and thought you put in. It’s been such a pleasure working with you: Phil Buckley, Brian McDonald, Dan London and Sarah Burris.

I cannot wait for the next one!

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Productive Procrastination

January 18th, 2010

There are a variety of activities that I categorize as “my job.” They range from absolutely-must-do tasks to do-if-you-have-time tasks. Some have hard deadlines and others are just for the sake of learning. Some are for clients (those are the must-do ones) and others are for Media Two. But most importantly, some I LOVE doing, and you couldn’t stop me from doing them if you tried, while I may procrastinate a bit on others.

These are my favorite ways to procrastinate by doing my job:

• Blog
• Check Google Analytics
• Check clicks to bit.ly links
• Check Twitter
• Read posts by other bloggers in my Google Reader, comment, retweet
• Education & research -  learn a new tool
• Make a fruitless attempt at cleaning out my inbox

What are your favorite work-related tasks?

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Facebook App to Give to Charity

January 17th, 2010

Chase Community Giving is offering Facebook users the opportunity to vote for which charity will be awarded BIG MONEY from Chase. There’s no reason not to do it, because you don’t even need to donate any money, just click.

Voting is open right now, so go to the Vote Here! tab on the Chase Community Giving Facebook Page, and decide which charity you’d like to see win the $1 million.

This is yet another example of a company making a great impact through social media networks by creating a Facebook app that appeals to their audience and by doing social good. Mixing social media with social good is a recipe for success. In return for the generous contribution to charity, Chase is being rewarded with:

• powerful positive sentiment
• extensive reach throughout the online community as users share with their followers, who share with theirs and so on…

If I may make a plug for a charity that is very near and dear to my heart, it’s Camp Kesem. You can find Camp Kesem here to vote for them. Camp Kesem is a free one-week sleep-away camp for children with a parent who has or has had cancer. There are several camps around the country, all run by college student volunteers. For four years I was a counselor at Camp Kesem North Carolina.

Chase Community Giving is also donating to an Emergency Relief Fund for Haiti.

UPDATE:

After publishing this post, a friend of mine (@seriallibrarian) sent me a tweet linking to news that there may have been some unfair play in regard to the voting process. A New York Times article lists three organizations that believe they were disqualified not due to a lack of votes, but due to the nature of their causes. They are asking Chase to reveal the vote counts. If anyone has any further details, feel free to add them in the comments below.

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Measuring Sentiment

January 8th, 2010

I just read a good article from threeminds called There’s No Silver Bullet For The Big, Bad Social Media Measurement Wolf. One of the interesting messages in the article stated that:

“If marketers’ business objective is to influence brand perception, then conversation sentiment – rather than conversation volume – is what should be monitored and measured.”

I agree that sentiment is one of the more valuable metrics to monitor when measuring success. However, it’s easier said than done. The article goes on to state that, “a listening platform with sentiment analysis would be an important tool in a marketer’s social media tool belt.” My response, after trying several of these tools out, is that they’re highly inaccurate and should not be strongly relied upon…at least not yet. Radian6’s sentiment analysis is fairly new (even in social media years). They say that as more people use the tool and correct for inaccurate analyses, the better the tool will become. Ok, I believe that.

The problem with these tools, though, is that they misread sarcasm. Imagine the auto-sentiment ranking on the following: “Pages are taking 10 minutes to load today. Thanks a lot [insert name of internet provider]!”

To make up for this, there is (with most tools) the option to manually set sentiment. FiltrBox is one example of a tool that allows you to manually set sentiment as negative, neutral or positive. This can work if you are monitoring a brand that brings in a low volume of posts. If that’s the case, then absolutely measure sentiment rather than volume.

However, if you have volume, it becomes very difficult to manually set sentiment because the posts are coming in as quickly as you can read them. For this reason, I disagree that sentiment should be measured rather than volume. Measure sentiment in the ways that you can. Take volume with a grain of salt. Understand that both play a role in your ROI and are important metrics.

The article goes on to make a good point that “the number of fans is important but only when coupled with the measurable influence of those advocates.” Yes.

What I’m getting at is that there are a lot of important metrics to measure.

What are the most important metrics to measure for YOUR business and why? What do you currently measure? What do you want to learn how to do a better job of measuring?

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